Heart of Stone (3 page)

“You know, that pleasant little scene never would have happened if you’d been doing your duty,” she griped half-humorously to the silent guardian. “You’re supposed to repel evil. Talk about lying down on the job.”

With her chin up and her eyes on Sir Arthur’s corded throat, Ella never saw the shadow moving toward her, never heard the footsteps approaching. But she did hear the loud crack of reality fracturing all around her.

Along with the stone shell of a suddenly very animated inanimate gargoyle.

Chapter Two

He had slept for so long that he nearly forgot what the world sounded like. A human scream, however, jarred him back to consciousness.

One moment he crouched poised on his pedestal, frozen in the same position he had occupied for more than a thousand years, and the next, he heard the crack of stone as he lifted himself to his feet.

Kees—that was his name, he remembered—shifted and flexed muscles too long unused. With a half beat of his unfurled wings, he launched himself into the air above the human, landing easily a few feet in front of her. Between her and the evil now attacking her.

For some reason, the woman only screamed louder.

Kees ignored her. All his attention focused on the man moving toward them. The darkness of the terrace didn’t bother him; he’d been designed to see in the night as clearly as a human saw in the day. More clearly. He had no trouble making out the rage-twisted face of the attacker, or the dark, pitted blade of the dagger the figure clutched in one fist.

Damn cultists never cared properly for their weapons.

The man darted to the right, trying to skirt around Kees to reach his target, but gargoyles had a lot more “around” to them than most creatures. With a shift of his shoulders, Kees spread his wings and used one sweeping motion to send the attacker through the air. Also unlike gargoyles, humans tended to land with a splat.

This one added a thud, then lay still. In the battle between the stones of the terrace and his skull, the stones had predictably won.

Turning to the woman whose screams had woken him, Kees examined her curiously. Her distress should not have been enough to penetrate his magical slumber and draw him back to consciousness. Only the threat of great, demonic evil unleashed on the mortal world should have done that.

So what was he to make of this ordinary human?

She was smallish, the way humans always looked to him, though he judged her even smaller than most, barely a couple of inches over five feet. Her features were soft and even, her lips bow-shaped, her hair light brown and fine. Skin fair enough to glow in the moonlight framed eyes wide and gray with no hint of blue or green to muddle their purity. And in that moment, they stared at him in pure, frozen terror.

Lifting a hand, he stepped forward. “I won’t hurt you.”

Even to his own ears, his voice sounded harsh and coarse from centuries of disuse. It rumbled out of him like the growl of a primitive beast, and he cursed himself when her expression filled with panic.

“You are safe with me.” He took another step, wincing when his thick skin scraped across the terrace like stone on stone. He had regained movement, but he still retained his hard armored shell. It would take a while longer for his skin to soften to something more natural. “I mean you no harm.”

Briefly, he let himself hope that her silence and stillness meant she intended to listen to him. He had sensed the magic in her; he knew she couldn’t be ignorant of it in the rest of the world. If he could ask her a few questions, she might be able to tell him how she had woken him, what battle he needed to fight.

Then she spoke, and his hopes plummeted.

“I have to wake up,” she muttered to herself. “Why can’t I wake up? This is a nightmare. It can’t possibly be real. None of this can be happening. Maybe if I pinch myself.”

Kees watched, half-impatient and half-confused, as the woman lifted a hand to her opposite arm and twisted a fingerful of flesh.

She yelped and stared up at him. “Holy shit. I’m not dreaming, am I?”

In spite of her words, her eyes did have a glazed appearance. Perhaps the man who had attacked her frightened her more than Kees had thought?

He glanced over his shoulder to see the still-unconscious human slumped where he had landed. He really hadn’t been much of a threat. Then Kees recalled what he remembered of humans from his last awakening and bit back a sigh. Some of them did seem to be as cowardly as field mice.

“No, this is no dream,” he growled, scowling down at her. He needed to know why he had woken and would prefer to waste no time in finding out. For that, he needed the human awake and aware. “This is, however, a serious matter, and I require answers from you, human. How did you awaken me? Where is the creature I must slay?”

“Slay?”

Her squeak even sounded like the noise a mouse might make. Kees sighed. Aloud, this time.

“Where is the threat, human?” he demanded. When she only continued to stare, he stepped forward once more only to see her expression blank and her jaw drop open. Like the animal he’d compared her to, she scurried backwards and watched him as if he’d grown cat’s whiskers and a hungry expression.

He made a concerted effort not to swish his tail.

“As I have said, I am no threat to you,” he sighed, reading her disbelief in her wary and still dazed appearance. “Come, I will prove it. Take my hand.”

He reached out to her, not even noticing the way his thick, razor-sharp talons caught the moonlight and glinted, looking almost liquid in the silvery light. Almost like they’d been coated in blood.

But the woman apparently did notice, because her next squeak turned quickly into a full-fledged scream, and she nearly fell over her own feet as she scrambled away from him.

Damn it, he didn’t have time for this.

Muttering a curse, he closed the distance between them in one long stride and seized the woman’s arms in a careful grip. He intended nothing more than to stop her from fleeing, but perhaps she misunderstood, because the moment that his rough skin touched her, she raised her hands and blasted him with raw magic.

*   *   *

I have. Lost. My. Mind.

Ella’s first thought upon realizing she was about to be attacked for the second time in one night seemed perfectly reasonable to her. What other explanation could there be?

She should have been safe inside the secured confines of the museum property—at least once Patrick Stanley had been escorted from the premises—because she should have been alone. A man with a knife certainly shouldn’t have emerged from the shadows and come gliding toward her like a slice of walking evil.

Most of all, though, she should not have just witnessed a thousand-year-old statue springing to life in her defense, because things like that simply didn’t happen. Not in the sane world. Statues didn’t move, they didn’t fly, they didn’t knock would-be muggers unconscious, and they certainly didn’t speak to people who had not just slipped over the edge into the land of certifiable lunatics.

Therefore, Ella had lost her mind.

Simple, really.

She was almost ready to close her eyes, click her heels together three times, and head back to Kansas when the statue turned away from her unconscious attacker and held out a hand.

“I won’t hurt you,” it rumbled.

As if it wasn’t a freakin’
gargoyle
!

Him, her impertinent mind quickly corrected. Even with the scrap of fabric masquerading as a loincloth covering up the evidentiary bits, the statue was unquestionably a him. Male. From the top of his horns to the tip of his tail.

Horns!

Tail!

Panic robbed Ella of her voice, so that all that emerged of her intended scream was a strangled, high-pitched chirp. Her heart formed a knot in her throat, and her eyes goggled, staring helplessly as the monster in front of her leaned forward, cutting off the light, the sky, the world, until all she could see was him. Chiseled features, sharp fangs, and eyes like pools of starless night sky.

She nearly passed out.

Fortunately, she caught herself before the edges of her vision could go more than a bit hazy.

Ella had no intention of being the dumb blond girl who got eviscerated before the end of the first act. Not only wasn’t she blond, but she was also not dumb, and she was not helpless; and if she found herself almost as scary as she found her present situation, at least she knew that this time, she wouldn’t be hurting any innocent bystanders.

Fifteen years ago, Ella had sworn to herself never to open this door again. She had slammed it shut and mentally nailed it over with stout boards. What was inside it, what was inside
her,
had never brought her anything more than fear and pain, but tonight, it might just bring her freedom.

Turning her head away from the sight of the monster who threatened her, she clenched her teeth, braced herself, and reached for the door handle.

It slammed open with the force of a Category 5 hurricane.

Ella tried to steel herself against the screaming. Now she could close her eyes. Now she
had
to close her eyes. She couldn’t watch what would follow.

It didn’t matter how many times she told herself that she had no choice, that it was her life at stake, that it wasn’t like the last time. Last time had been an accident. She hadn’t known what would happen, hadn’t even recognized it when her control snapped and her world ended. Then, her loss of control cost her everything. This time, she had nothing left to lose.

If she could have stepped out of the stream of energy and run screaming, she would have, but since the badness flowed straight through her, all she could do was to wait for the monster to let her go, and pray that it happened fast. Then she could start forgetting. Again.

She knew her mind replayed the echoes of old screams, and she concentrated on blocking those out. She frowned when she realized that without the memory-screams, the room sounded oddly quiet. The waves of energy created a rushing sound in her ears, like a constantly incoming tide, but nothing sharp or shrill rose above the steady whoosh. No one was screaming.

Cautiously, she opened her eyes and peered through the fringe of her lashes. The creature who held her hadn’t moved, hadn’t run away, hadn’t disappeared into an explosion of light and smoke. He also hadn’t been killed, wounded, dismembered, beheaded, or otherwise driven insane. Instead, he just looked annoyed.

Well, annoyed and curious.

“Are you planning to stop anytime soon, or do you plan to exhaust yourself into unconsciousness, human?”

The question startled Ella so much, the energy cut off as if a switch had been thrown. The gargoyle simply continued to loom over her, looking not a bit worse for the wear. Come to think of it, if anything, he looked mildly irritated.

He underlined the impression by glaring down at her and snapping, “Are you finished?”

Ella wondered. Her head was spinning—a side effect she knew came from letting down her barriers and unleashing the darkness inside her—but she couldn’t use that to explain why a gargoyle was currently speaking to her. He’d started before she attacked him.

And she
had
attacked him, so why was he still standing?

As if triggered by the thought, Ella’s knees gave out, and suddenly
she
was no longer standing. She would have ended up tailbone first on the hard stone terrace if the monster in front of her hadn’t moved faster than she could blink and gripped her elbows, catching her weight and easing her down to a sitting position on the pavers.

“Thanks,” she mumbled reflexively.

He waved away her gratitude. “I told you that I mean you no harm, but I have questions that I must ask you. Are you well enough to answer?”

The gargoyle had crouched down beside her, but Ella still had to look up to see his face. Maybe that explained the touch of hysteria in her small laugh.

“Me? I’m just fine. I’m hallucinating, because it’s either that, or I’m talking to a real live monster at the moment, but other than that, I’m perfect. Ask away.”

His mouth firmed, lips pressing together in what Ella guessed was probably not his amused face; then he blew out a breath that sounded like exasperation.

“It disturbs you to look at me? I appear as a monster to you? Fine. Is this better?”

It took Ella a good thirty seconds to remember her name.

Somehow, watching while the monstrous, terrifying creature in front of you aimed a put-upon expression in your direction and then proceeded to transform himself into a vision right out of the pages of
Studs Monthly
could really knock the wind out of a girl.

The thing from a French artist’s long-ago vision of might and menace had just become the most blatantly attractive man Ella ever laid eyes on.

Standing at a huge but realistic human height of six feet and three or four inches, the man now crouched in the spot the monster had just been had the heavy, chiseled musculature of a bodybuilder. Not the thick-necked Arnold Schwarzenegger type, though. Even as powerful as he looked, he still managed to appear lean and graceful, as if every muscle in his body hadn’t been artificially enlarged, but worked and honed to peak efficiency.

Underneath the jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt that had appeared during his transformation, Ella could see the ripple of contained force and found herself wishing for a better look at all that masculine perfection.

What was she thinking? Ella mentally slapped herself. This was a monster, not a man. Ogling males of other species was a creepy habit she had no intention of developing.

But without the distraction of fangs and horns and, you know,
wings,
Ella found herself admiring the nearly angelic clarity of his features. His face had actually changed very little from how it had appeared in his stony form. A little softer, perhaps, the angles a little less steep, but overall he looked nearly the same. She couldn’t call him beautiful exactly—his face was too forcefully male for that—but even so, the combination of the sharp, high cheekbones; the long, narrow nose; and the hard, tapered jaw shadowed with the hint of evening scruff threatened the natural balance of her hormones.